National Preparedness Month Spotlight: Connect with Your Community

September is National Preparedness Month, and it’s time to start planning with your neighbors.

Led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Preparedness Month is dedicated to educating and empowering Americans to prepare for emergencies that may take place in our homes, workplaces, schools, and communities. This week is all about how to prepare for emergencies by getting involved in your community with your neighbors.

Here at Nextdoor, we believe our neighborhoods are one of the most important communities in our lives – and that we can lean on our neighbors for support in times of emergency. In the past year, our nation has faced a number of emergencies, from the devastating fires in Monterey County, to the historic flooding in Louisiana, to the tragic shootings in Orlando, Dallas, and Baton Rouge.

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Time and again, we have seen neighbors come together on Nextdoor to check in on one another and keep each other safe, to discuss recovery plans, and to lend a helping hand.

For example, in Mooreville, NC, a family was devastated by a fire that destroyed their entire home and killed their beloved family pets. With a simple post to Nextdoor, one neighbor rallied her community and collected over 20 gift cards and $2,000 for the family. A tragic event made a little better by a giving community.

This past August, Lindsey Pyburn of Nextdoor’s Northwoods neighborhood in Louisiana was able to locate her husband during the worst of the floods in Baton Rouge with the help of Nextdoor and a generous neighbor. She also used Nextdoor to donate clothing to neighbors who had lost everything in the floods.

And, in Plano, TX, we saw neighbors come together to help locate a 7-year-old boy who had run away from home one night. The Plano Police Department posted an urgent alert to Nextdoor, and within hours, a determined neighbor found the lost boy when helicopters and search teams could not.

These are all examples of the amazing things that can happen when neighbors start talking. In times of emergency, the people who live around you may become your greatest resource, and that’s why we want you to start planning with your neighbors.

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Nextdoor and FEMA encourages you to get involved in your community, whether it’s by volunteering for the local Red Cross or Meals on Wheels, joining your neighborhood watch, or getting trained on basic disaster response skills with CERT, Community Emergency Response Teams.

You can never be too prepared, so take the initiative and start communicating with your neighbors about how to prepare for emergencies in your community.

Do you have a story about how you have used Nextdoor in your neighborhood? Let us know.